Ayatollah Khamenei insists Iran's nuclear course will not change

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, has said the country's nuclear course would not change regardless of international sanctions, assassinations or other pressures.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali KhameneiPhoto: AFP

10:40AM GMT 22 Feb 2012

"With God's help, and without paying attention to propaganda, Iran's nuclear course should continue firmly and seriously ... Pressures, sanctions and assassinations will bear no fruit. No obstacles can stop Iran's nuclear work."

Ayatollah Khamenei was speaking on state television shortly after the UN nuclear watchdog declared a collapse in talks with Iran aimed at getting it to address suspicions that it is covertly seeking nuclear weapons capability.

The Islamic Republic denies this, saying its programme to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel is for peaceful energy only.

But Iran's refusal to curb sensitive atomic activities with both civilian and military purposes, and its track record of secrecy and restricting UN inspections, have drawn increasingly harsh UN and separate US and European sanctions, now targeting its economically vital oil exports.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in bombings over the past two years, attacks that Tehran has blamed on arch-adversary Israel. The Jewish state has not commented.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out resorting to military action against Iran if they conclude that diplomacy and sanctions will not stop it from developing a nuclear warhead.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Wednesday that UN inspectors investigating suspected nuclear weapon activities had been denied access to a key military site.

"Intensive efforts were made to reach agreement on a document facilitating the clarification of unresolved issues in connection with Iran's nuclear programme," the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, agreement was not reached on this document."

The team requested access both during this visit and during a first trip in late January to the Parchin military site, near Tehran, where it believes explosives testing was carried out, but Iran "did not grant permission," it said.

"It is disappointing that Iran did not accept our request to visit Parchin during the first or second meetings," IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said in the statement.

"We engaged in a constructive spirit, but no agreement was reached."

The IAEA delegation's findings are likely to be included in a report by Amano expected to be circulated to diplomats in Vienna later this week, which will be presented to the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors on March 5.

The report will also be closely watched for what progress Iran is making fitting out its new enrichment facility inside a mountain bunker at Fordo, amid speculation it is preparing to install thousands of new centrifuges there.

The IAEA said in January Iran had begun to enrich uranium to 20 per cent at the site, taking it significantly closer to the 90-percent purity uranium needed to go into a nuclear bomb.